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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from geek.com: "Amazon has released a rather bizarre bit of news today. The Kindle Fire has completely sold out. You can no longer buy one, and the wording of the press release suggests there won't be any more manufactured. In nine months on sale Amazon claims to have secured 22 percent of tablet sales in the U.S.. With that in mind, Amazon will definitely be selling more Kindle Fires, however, the next one you'll be able to buy will probably have a '2' at the end of the name. Jeff Bezos said that the Kindle Fire is Amazon's most successful product launch so far and that there's 'an exciting roadmap ahead.' He also confirmed Amazon will continue to offer hardware, but there's no detail beyond that."Also covered on Slashcloud.

To be fair, most companies keep selling the old one until the new product is actually available though. Some even continue to sell the old model afterwards as a budget model.

I remember there was a lot of grumbling when the Kindle 3 came out like a week after the Kindle DX (based on the Kindle 2) did.

Meanwhile, back in the days when Apple products were announced AND were available in stores immediately, any pending orders would get upgraded to the new models automatically, which was pretty cool of them.

>>>any pending orders would get upgraded to the new models automatically, which was pretty cool of them.

Unless you didn't want the new models, then it would suck. For example I wouldn't want the new 4S phone because it has a dualcore that drains the battery faster than the old 4 model. If I order the "4" then that's exactly what I want..... not Apple to upgrade me.

Another example of this is where I ordered a stick-shift Beetle and the dealer "helpfully" upgraded me to the Automated Shift because "it gets +2 more MPG". Yeah. True. But I wanted to shift the car myself.

He lost a sale that day.Then he begged me to keep the business.So I told him to knock $1000 off the price. His foolish behavior cost him some cash. A customer wants Exactly what they what, not a a car dealer's or Apple's switcheroo.

Although I would nonchalantly agree with you, many people including my wife, would vehemently disagree. From her perspective, an automatic transmission is an obvious upgrade over a manual in so far as you don't have to know how and when to shift the gears yourself and don't have to worry about rolling back into the car behind you on "tricky" incline starts.

I recently tried to sell a 2001 vehicle with a manual transmission. For every interested buyer I probably encountered three or four who were no longer interested as soon as I mentioned that it had a manual transmission.

Not exactly. An automatic transmission is a *requirement* for some drivers, so there is no upgrade/downgrade about it. For someone who is good at (and enjoys) driving stick, manual->automatic is not an upgrade. For instance, an electric->gas stove isn't an upgrade for my parents because they don't have a gas connection at their house.

For someone who is good at (and enjoys) driving stick, manual->automatic is not an upgrade.

Sometimes? But after I moved to a far busier city than I was in before, automatic became the way to go; there was too much stop and go traffic for me to really enjoy shifting.

I also grew up in a city on a fairly large hill (~1000 ft elevation difference between the lowest and highest points), and driving a manual was a pain at times when you were heading up the hill - although learning how to drive stick in that e

Personally, I think automatic gearboxes are pointless if you're healthy and not somehow disabled.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold onto the steering wheel, work the clutch, talk on the phone, eat a messy taco, *and* have to shift gears manually? Do you *want* me to get in an accident, or something?

I love manual transmissions. Last thing I want to do when I buy a car that I'll be driving for years is to ask myself, man it's going to be hard to find someone to buy it when I'm done.
I just think of myself doing some other manual transmission enthusiast a favor, years from now.

I believe that torque converters are generally less efficient than the use of a mechanical clutch, due to the inherent losses involved in having a heavy additional piece of machinery that transmits torque through a fluid bearing compared to the relatively simple and direct clutch mechanism. No matter how intelligently the car shifts, the simpler transmission in a manual is inherently more efficient. CVT might be better than manual, though.

CVT, not currently due to current designs and materials. It theoretically could be though.

VW's DSG could theoretically be on par but is more costly and complicated. It still can't anticipate the road ahead though which is what my preference for manual is about (though that can be compensated for with the correct control interface).

>>>definitely an upgrade for the driver behind you, who has to stop accelerating each time you switch gears manually

Good shifters don't slow down. Professional shifters (raccar drivers) do it so fast you have to rewind the tape to see what the blur was. And of course good automatic drivers should stop following so damn close so they don't need to brake when I shift from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3.

Volkswagen comes with Direct-Shift-Gearing which has discrete gearing like a manual, but does the shifting

Some even continue to sell the old model afterwards as a budget model.

ie. They lose money.

Or gain market share.

In the case of a Kindle, the expectation is you'll be buying eBooks from Amazon.

The reality is, selling it at a loss is better than having unsold inventory you'll never sell anyway. So you might as well sell at a discount and recoup *some* of your costs, or you just end up with junk and recover none of your costs.

Intuitively it seems ludicrous that reducing production would decrease the marginal cost.

1. NRE and other sunk costs have already been amortized.2. Component costs are lower3. They don't have to reduce production: They can just do one last run at full production to use up their packaging, cases, PCBs and other components, and then sell from stock

Intuitively it seems ludicrous that reducing production would decrease the marginal cost.

I think the theory goes that by the time you're retiring a product (unless it was a complete flop), you're likely to have recouped the start-up and development costs, and then the cost of units after a certain point get cheaper per unit and you flip over into the black.

If the product was successful, you recoup your costs from the first units, and then start becoming profitable. Over time, by the time you're well into

The poster doesn't have a strange idea at all. Do you realize that if they're set to release in a few weeks and have run out of old stock that they can't just call up Foxxconn and get a few thousand at the same price point that they could get a few million? If they plan on releasing a better model at $199 it may well cost them most than 199 to have a short run produced.

you do understand large scale production, don't you? You do understand why producing a limited number of units may cost you more, don't you? You do realize that someone at Amazon can't just pick up a phone and say "make another 50 thousand for Monday." Don't you? You do understand that some of the hardware may not even be available if the same suppliers have retooled for a new product and new parts, don't you?

I'm amazed by how short sighted Slashdotters are anymore and how they dismiss another post with a flippant remark instead of having some logic to back up their ideas.

Are they? "IHS iSuppli said the components that go into the Kindle Fire cost $191.65. Additional manufacturing expenses bring the total cost to $209.63."

Maybe Amazon negotiated a really good deal where the mysterious "additional expenses" are near-zero, and the Kindle costs less than the $199 pricetag. For that matter we don't know what the components really costs; I used to negotiate pricing and depending upon the day-of-the-week/supply/etc the total cost could fluctuate as much as $50.

Also, nobody know what specific deals Amazon is getting with their suppliers. I don't know about IHS iSuppli (got a link?), but most of the time when I see these breakdowns of how much things cost, they are going based on prices for single units, or small runs. When you're selling millions of units, the price gets severely reduced. Assuming This is the article you refer to [isuppli.com], I have serious doubts about their prices. For one thing, they rate the WLAN at $4.50, but you can easily get USB WLAN dongles from Al

This is a much better way for them to do it I think. They don't want people to by a crappy device compared to what they can get at the same price point a couple weeks later. They are already not making a lot (or any depending on which tech news site you believe) on the device so dropping the thing to a budget model doesn't make sense. If the body or screen or something is in short supply why use it to make the old device when you need to ramp up for the new one? I think it is perfectly fine for a company to

Sounds like typical Amazon efficiency. They planned the stock of the Kindle Fire to run right up until the introduction of the new model, and hit it pretty close. They don't want to just list the old one as out of stock, because then they would have a backlog of orders that could never be filled, and they'd incur additional expense contacting customers and switching the order to the new one (which might not be exactly the same price).

They probably ran out of stock. They would be well into ramping up the next one. They aren't Apple that has enough new products to keep a whole factory dedicated just for them to keep knocking them out.

I'd guess they missed their "out of stock" date, and the new ones aren't ready to be announced and shipping just yet. Or maybe some other company started buying up 7" panels even though that company denies a 7" tablet?

Maybe MickyTheIdiot..... never mind I can stop right there. LOL. Warehouse Deals has a lot of good bargains on products. However I still find a get better bargains through private sellers because so many of them are dishonest (describing used items as "new"), and therefore I can negotiate a refund to get the item free or 50% off.

Margins. With margins this low they can't afford to have any units left on "clearance" because they lose money on every one of those, and each one wipes out the profits from many successfully sold units.

Great! Now that there is a temporary shortage of supply, I can sell mine and trade up to a Kindle 2 or a Google Nexus 7. Once the new ones are announced, I'm sure demand for the old ones will drop to zero. Thanks for the alert!

Great! Now that there is a temporary shortage of supply, I can sell mine and trade up to a Kindle 2 or a Google Nexus 7. Once the new ones are announced, I'm sure demand for the old ones will drop to zero. Thanks for the alert!

Not really, there are enough people who probably are waiting for the KF2 to come out so they can pick up used KF's for under $100, hoping people will upgrade and force a glut on the market.

Of course, Amazon probably doesn't want to risk having ot sell out the old stock at super low pr

That's the only reason I can think of that they would stop making money. It's like how Microsoft used to lose money on every Xbox sold, or Sony and the PS3. They wanted a foot in the door of the market, and their next offering will be something that makes them money for each unit sold, rather than losing them money.

Ya that was my exact thoughts as well. I went the nook route rather than the kindle route, and I went with an actual Ereader than a tablet but I've played with the fire and it is a good tablet especially for its price.

That new Nook Glow is pretty sweet, but I went with the Kindle e-ink because it was cheap ($70) and it's the only one that has a subscription to Fantasy & Science Magazine for a mere $1/month (instead of $3). I couldn't pass up that bargain.

Or at least, they must not have been making much. If they can increase the specs slightly and the profit significantly that's enough reason to bring out a new edition. There's a zillion tablets out there now, so they could have a rebranded whatsit with a slightly modified bezel and a different rear panel sticker with little agony on their own parts.

You can get a cheap, no-name, Android tablet with a capacitive touchscreen for less than $150 and the KF's specs were always fairly low. The CPU's OK, but the screen is 1024x600, there's stereo speakers but no microphone, there's no camera, and the only ports are audio out and micro USB - no video, no audio in. Oh, and it has a whopping 6G of RAM.

I suspect, actually, the KF does cost less than $200 to build. Not much less, but enough for it not to make a loss if someone buys one and never buys a single app or piece of music.

This development strikes me as a classic "Build anticipation for KF2" thing, not a "Phew, we got rid of the things. They were taking up space" type complaint.

Bear in mind that if the KF2 is a sub-$100 device, or alternatively is a $200 device with specs rivaling the N7, people who just bought a KF1 a few days before are going to be very upset with Amazon unless they issue free upgrades. Older Slashdotters may remember Amstrad's CPC664 fiasco where Amstrad replaced a 64K home computer with a 128K one over night, and the resultant bad press it got Amstrad! Consumers think they're being ripped off if a manufacturer makes their brand new device obsolete.

I'm very interested to see what the KF2 will be. Are Amazon going to go for cheap, or are they going to go for a Nexus 7 competitor?

And maybe not. The original Kindle sold for around $500. Do you think they felt "ripped" off when Amazon released the K2 for $250? Or the current base version for $79? Another example: I know many people who paid $25,000 for their Echo-style Priuses but a year later a dealer offered me one for a mere $18,000 because he knew a Prius 2 was coming soon. When you adopt something early, you should understand that you are paying a premium price and that later versions will be cheaper.

The headline of the article is "Kindle Fire 2 expected next week". Why would they deliberately increase the stock of the current generation, when they are going to have to sell them at a discount when the new generation comes out, thus competing with themselves?

The ideal situation for a manufacturer to be in is to sell out all of his old stock exactly when the new product is available. Next best is to have a small gap between product availabilty, building a little pent-up demand. Worst is having excess s

Based on the fact that they have some sort of event scheduled for next week, I'd guess that they ordered what they thought would be enough units from manufacturing to hold them over until the KF2 is released, but ran out. Rather than order a whole new manufacturing run to tide them over for a week, looks like they just decided to wait for their new product launch.

I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.

I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.

The Nexus 7 is a great device. It's nice to be able to run the latest software without having to jailbreak/root the device sine most MDM software checks for this and disables your access to corporate data. So far I couldn't be happier with mine.

I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.

I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.

Actually, one of the points agains the Kindle Fire in my book was that it offloaded so much to the Amazon servers. Who needs to remotely delete files when they're not really local to begin with?

I'd scratch Nook from that list if I were you, though. The color/tablet Nooks do not allow access to local book storage the way the original Nook did. So your local copy is now more imaginary than real.

Ahh, but the Nook Tablet can be soft-rooted with nothing more than an SD card. Warranty issue? Pop out the SD card and it'll boot the stock firmware with no trace of the soft-root. More to the point, when you soft-root and use the Nook app, all your downloaded books are saved to your SD card.

I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again."

Because of course it's perfectly reasonable to expect Amazon to keep up with every licensing lawsuit running through the courts in every jurisdiction. It's apparently also perfectly reasonable to want Amazon to release source code "proof" for a proprietary product, and openly endorse users screwing around in the filesystem of a device they support, opening up their technical support to infinite variety and infinite complications.

Even if they did offer such proof that the original system was removed, any mechanism for remote code execution (whether intentionally present or not) could be abused to reimplement the same function, so the proof itself is meaningless. Even a promise not to do it again is meaningless, because a court order could trump that.

They don't even have a reason to be sorry for altering "your" property. There's a nice "terms of service" contract that you agreed to by using the product, and those terms let Amazon do whatever they want. They had your permission to do what they did, so why should they apologize for it now that somebody regrets that contract?

I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling.

And manufacturers aren't willing to support or in any way deal with the inconsistent administrative mess of letting you control the devices. Nobody really cares if you buy a device for the hardware, mod it 'til your heart's content, and never let the company know it was turned on. The moment your untrusted device starts dealing with their network, though, you become a threat. So go ahead, and use your offline reader. The companies that offer connected devices don't want to deal with your need for "control", anyway.

We are well beyond the "if things arent exactly as i demand, i wont participate.". Like it or not, we are not the drivers of tech anymore and our influence in telling people not to buy spy machines is gone. THe only path left is RMS style or else a doctrine of mitigation like stripping DRM yourself, and backing up on your personal network.

I felt the same way for the longest time until I discovered Calibre [calibre-ebook.com]. I download all my books of the Kindle, convert them to a different format and keep local backups. If Amazon decides to delete the version they have in "the cloud" I simply copy the one from my cloud over! In the mean time it is quite nice to have hundreds of books on a single device the size of a paperback that fits in my back pocket.

It's pointless to try to swim against the tide and, yes, tablets are getting more and more locked down. There's still jailbreaking, rooting, and Nexus devices though. The really funny thing is that if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly the most open tablets will be the new Windows 8 stuff coming (not RT obviously). Crazy talk.

The default OS on a KF is a wretched, miserable mess with so much customization and lockdown that you would hardly recognize an Android OS in there at all. I could not recommend using FK in this fashion - before any consideration is made of Amazon's sneaky remote access issues.

At the same time, for those with the ability and/or nerve to do so, rooting and installing an ICS Android ROM gives you a fantastic Android device that can do *just about* everything the stock KF can do... and a whole lot more.

Using a ziplock bag seems like a reasonable hack for some people. I even confirmed it works just now. Grabbed a bag from the cabinet, shoved a Kindle Fire in the bag (case and all), turned it on, and proceeded to use it without a problem.

I also just tried a Kindle Touch and LeapPad. Both work fine (though the LeapPad stylus is awkward).

Buy a good ziplock bag and you should be fine even if you go swimming.

With that in mind, Amazon will definitely be selling more Kindle Fires, however, the next one you'll be able to buy will probably have a "2 at the end of the name. Jeff Bezos said that the Kindle Fire is Amazon's most successful product launch so far and that there's 'an exciting roadmap ahead.' He also confirmed Amazon will continue to offer hardware, but there's no detail beyond that."

Huh. I don't really think that an Amazon Kindle Fire 2 at the end of the name. Jeff Bezos said that the Kindle Fire i

I know Amazon is trying to get everone to store everything in the cloud, but I really hope they put a media slot (micro or regular SD) on the new Kindle.

I'm seriously considering the nook tablet over the Kindle or Nexus 7, because I can't imagine doing anything on a tablet that really pushes the CPU/GPU, but I can see needing more than 16gb of storage. And not having a nearby wifi spot for the cloud, or the patience to download everything over wifi instead of swapping out a memory card.

Ehh, I haven't needed more than 8GB so far (I do have a 16GB though) on my Nexus 7. If/when it comes to it, I've got my £2 usb OTG adapter cable and my existing 16GB thumbdrive on my keyring should I need more portable space - and I'm sure I can chuck a 32GB or two in my luggage if I'm travelling far.

Good timing for Amazon if they can sell out their existing inventory before Apple moves into the 7 inch device market. Perhaps Amazon has seen the writing on the wall. I expect many players will be forced out of the market.

If Amazon does a Fire 2 it will need to be more than a vanilla Android with a custom GUI. 7 inch devices are about to become a market requiring innovation, not just low pricing.

I don't care what the iPad "Mini" does, price is always the #1 factor when it comes to market dominance. Based on prior prices by Apple, Amazon won't have a problem selling 7 inch tablets. You have to be joking if you think a several hundred dollar tablet can compete with a $100 or $200 tablet.

I like the Fire because of size and price. I bought a refub for $140 as an alternative for time when the iPad was too big, such as late night reading. It was money well spent. The Fire is a well designed Android device, makes little effort to be a iPad, but is integrated well with Amazon content. I don't know if I would be interested in a small iPad.

The only problem i have with the Fire is the battery life and the choice of USB. I only charge my devices overnight, and mostly they can last all day. Y

They should focus on e-ink tablets instead of trying to compete with Apple. Because if you're not Apple, then you're competing with everybody else on the price tag. And low-cost Android tablets are already available [amazon.com] for under 100$ and I don't think Amazon can beat companies like Coby on pricing.

What we need is the next step, color e-ink Kindles. I they can keep wi-fi and the Webkit browser in the new e-ink Kindles, it's a plus. It makes a very nice low-power and long battery life portable browser.